[Mark Pettit]

Being a member of the glass-is-half-empty club, I commonly find myself scrutinizing FIRST (and everything else in which I participate). I can see your points that there are some shortcomings, but I also see it as another part of the challenge. In the real world, there are few constants and few instances where you will be given a perfect environment in which to work, especially in the engineering and design sectors. Information changes all the time because of advancements, enhancements, and even because the info wasn't accurate in the first place. Even when things are specifically spelled out in the real world, designs commonly fail to get built exactly as spec'd on paper, hence the term "as-built drawings".
There are several things that FIRST could improve upon, certainly, but I'm chalking it all up to being simply another part of the game/challenge.
All we can do is monitor these message boards and the FIRST Q&A System and spread the updated news to members of this community in hopes that we can play a part in making things right for our team as well as everyone else.
We're all in the same boat here. Just like in the game where our opponents are also our teammates, FIRST is sometimes an opponent and sometimes a teammate.